Hitler's meeting with Admiral Horthy

90.13.44 "Such an historian would ponder whether the language of the minutes can be said to be consistent with a desire on the part of the Nazis to secure the deportation of the Jews and nothing more."

91.Gray J overlooks the striking fact that there is no mention of killing the Jews in the internal Magyar records taken by the Hungarian ministers at this conference, accessible in Hungarian archives to-day. This was a point that Irving made mostpowerfully.

92.113.44 "He would also have in mind the subsequent history of the Romanian and Hungarian Jews."

93.As a matter of historical methodology, it would be wrong to construe the minutes of an April 1943 meeting with the benefit of hindsight about what allegedly happened to Hungarian Jews in May/June 1944 under totally different circumstances, namely the German invasion of Hungary and the deposition of Horthy, who was himself imprisoned in concentration camp.

94.13.44: "Irving was constrained to accept that the pretext which he put forward for the meeting with Horthy (the Warsaw ghetto uprising which happened afterwards) was false, as was his explanation for the harsh attitude evinced by Hitler at the meeting (recent Allied bombing raids)."

95.The Warsaw ghetto was a seething cauldron for weeks before the uprising. Hitler himself referred to the bombing of civilians in his talk with Horthy, which Irving put to Gray J by translating the relevant passage after Evans had denied it. The transcript of the conference shows that Hitler told Admiral Horthy on 16 April 1943:--

"If one did not drive out the Jews now, then they would again just as then destroy the economy, the currency, and morale. . Anyway, why should the Jews be handled with kid gloves?. . . They were responsible particularly for the bombing of the civilian population and the countless victims among women and children."

96.Later Horthy answered. "He had done", he said, "everything one decently could against the Jews, but one couldn't very well murder them or bump them off somehow." The Führer replied that:--

"There was no need for that either. Hungary could accommodate the Jews in concentration camps just like Slovakia. . . If there was talk of murdering the Jews, then he (the Führer) must point out that only one person murdered, namely the Jew who started wars, and who by his influence gave the wars their anti-civilian, anti-women and anti-children character. With regard for the Jews, there was always the possibility of having them work down the mines. But at all costs they must be cut off from any kind of influence on their host country." (Prof. Andreas Hiligruber, Staatsmaenner und Diplomaten bei Hitler,vol. E., pp. 239 to 245)

97.13.44: "I was not persuaded that Irving had any satisfactory explanation for his transposition from 16 to 17 April [1943] of Hitler's comforting remark, made on 16 April, that there was no need for the murder or elimination of the Hungarian Jews." Given the actual content of the remark, the accidental misdating of the reference by one day makes no difference.